Epicurean Hedonism as Qualitative Hedonism

Epicurus’ theory of what is good for a person is hedonistic: only pleasure has intrinsic value. Critics object that Epicurus is committed to advocating sensualist excess, since hedonism seems both to imply that more pleasure is always of some good for you, and to recommend even debauched, sensual kinds of pleasure. However, Epicurus can respond to this objection much like J. S. Mill responds to the objection that hedonism is a “doctrine worthy only of swine”. I argue that Epicurus’ hedonism is a version of qualitative hedonism on which static pleasure is intrinsically superior to other kinds of pleasure. I also argue that Epicurus conceives of pleasure as a phenomenal or felt quality of experience, and that this is compatible with his troublesome claim that there is an upper limit to pleasure and wellbeing.     

Hedonism Reconsidered

This paper is a plea for hedonism to be taken more seriously. It begins by charting hedonism's decline, and suggests that this is a result of two major objections: the claim that hedonism is the 'philosophy of swine', reducing all value to a single common denominator, and Nozick's 'experience machine' objection. There follows some elucidation of the nature of hedonism, and of enjoyment in particular. Two types of theory of enjoyment are outlined–internalism, according to which enjoyment has some special 'feeling tone', and externalism, according to which enjoyment is any kind of experience to which we take some special attitude, such as that of desire. Internalism–the traditional view–is defended against current externalist orthodoxy. The paper ends with responses to the philosophy of swine and the experience machine objections.     

Hedonism and Happiness

Hedonism is a way of life, characterised by openness to pleasurable experience. There are many qualms about hedonism. It is rejected on moral grounds and said to be detrimental to long-term happiness. Several mechanisms for this 'paradox of hedonism' have been suggested and telling examples of pleasure seekers ending up in despair have been given. But is that the rule? If so, how much pleasure is too much? An overview of the available knowledge is given in this paper. The relation between hedonism and happiness has been studied at two levels: that of the nation and the individual. At the national level average happiness is correlated with moral acceptance of pleasure and with active leisure. At the individual level it is similarly linked with hedonistic attitudes and also correlated with hedonistic behaviours such as frequent sex and use of stimulants. In most cases the pattern is linearly positive. The relation between happiness and consumption of stimulants follows an inverted U-curve, spoilsports and guzzlers are less happy than modest consumers. Yet, these data cannot settle the issue, since the observed relations may be spurious or due to the effects of happiness on hedonism rather than the reverse. Even if we can prove a positive effect of (mild) hedonism on happiness, there is still the question of how that gains balances against a possible loss of health. A solution is to assess the effect of hedonistic living on the number of years lived happily.     

Desire Satisfactionism and Hedonism

Hedonism and the desire-satisfaction theory of welfare (“desire satisfactionism”) are typically seen as archrivals in the contest over identifying what makes one’s life go best. It is surprising, then, that the most plausible form of hedonism just is the most plausible form of desire satisfactionism. How can a single theory of welfare be a version of both hedonism and desire satisfactionism? The answer lies in what pleasure is: pleasure is, in my view, the subjective satisfaction of desire. This thesis about pleasure is clarified and defended only after we proceed through the dialectics that get us to the most plausible forms of hedonism and desire satisfactionism.     

An Objection to Attitudinal Hedonism

This article argues that attitudinal hedonism is false as atheory of what is intrinsically good for us because it impliesthat nothing is intrinsically good for someone who does nothave the psychological capacity for the propositional attitudeof enjoyment even if he has other important mental capacitiesthat humans have.     

Explaining the Paradox of Hedonism

The paradox of hedonism is the idea that making pleasure the only thing that we desire for its own sake can be self-defeating. Why would this be true? In this paper, I survey two prominent explanations, then develop a third possible explanation, inspired by Joseph Butler's classic discussion of the paradox. The existing accounts claim that the paradox arises because we are systematically incompetent at predicting what will make us happy, or because the greatest pleasures for human beings are found in certain special goods which hedonists cannot enjoy. On the account that I develop, the paradox is a consequence of a theory about the nature of pleasure, together with a view about the requirements of rational belief. Which of these explanations is correct, I argue, bears on central questions about how to understand the nature and extent of the paradox.     

Intuitive knowledge

In this paper I assume that we have some intuitive knowledge—i.e. beliefs that amount to knowledge because they are based on intuitions. The question I take up is this: given that some intuition makes a belief based on it amount to knowledge, in virtue of what does it do so? We can ask a similar question about perception. That is: given that some perception makes a belief based on it amount to knowledge, in virtue of what does it do so? A natural idea about perception is that a perception makes a belief amount to knowledge in part by making you sensorily aware of the concrete objects it is about. The analogous idea about intuition is that an intuition makes a belief amount to knowledge in part by making you intellectually aware of the abstract objects it is about. I expand both ideas into fuller accounts of perceptual and intuitive knowledge, explain the main challenge to this sort of account of intuitive knowledge (i.e. the challenge of making sense of intellectual awareness), and develop a response to it.     

Intuitive covariation estimation

Six experiments concerned people's ability to estimate the degree and sign of covariation represented in a bivariate distribution of stimuli with which they had just been presented as a series of pairs of stimuli. The stimuli were pairs of numbers, pairs of lines of variable lengths, or word-line pairs. In the latter case, subjects were asked to think of the words in terms of either pleasantness or familiarity; hence, the covariation relationship was between the normative pleasantness or familiarity value of the word and a line of variable length. In the sixth experiment, subjects were presented with two word-line pairs and were asked to access the covariation of both simultaneously. In most cases, the estimates reflected the sign and degree of covariation of the stimuli quite well. The estimates did not reflect accurately the stimulus covariation when the stimuli were numerical and the sign of the correlation of the stimuli was negative. A distinction is made between intuitive and strategic processes in the assessment of covariation.     

Professional Traders as Intuitive Bayesians

We compare the behavior of laboratory markets populated by experienced commodity and stock traders with the behavior of markets populated by MBA student traders. Unlike previous research, subject experience is a treatment variable in our experiment. Trading experience is found to be an important determinant of how well market outcomes approximate equilibrium predictions. Markets with student traders exhibit biases consistent with the prior literature; bias levels in markets with experienced traders are substantially reduced and trend toward zero. These market level results are confirmed with individual level tests. However, we cannot unambiguously determine whether the market outcomes with experienced traders are better organized using Bayes′ rule or by a heuristic-base rate neglect.     

The Good Life: A Defense of Attitudinal Hedonism

What makes a life go well for the one who lives it? Hedonists hold that pleasure enhances the value of a life; pain diminishes it. Hedonism has been subjected to a number of objections. Some are (a) based on the claim that hedonism is a form of “mental statism”. Others are (b) based on the claim that some pleasures are base or degrading. Yet others are (c) based on the claim that when a bad person enjoys a pleasure, his receipt of that pleasure seem not to make the world better. It is important to keep in mind that hedonism is a theory about the value of a person's life for the person who lives it, and not for the world or for others. It is also important to distinguish between sensory hedonism and attitudinal hedonism. “Desert Adjusted Intrinsic Attitudinal Hedonism” appears to be immune to objections (a) and (b). A variant appears to be immune to all of them. Perhaps it is the answer to the question about the value of a life.